


behind these eyes (a world is hiding)

by orphan_account



Series: Damerey Daily 2020 [2]
Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: DamereyDaily2020, F/M, runaway drabble, written in a depressed funk at 10 pm on a school night just because
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-21
Updated: 2020-01-21
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:53:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22345159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Rey’s never been great with words.For Damerey Daily day 18: “silence is just a protective coating over pain.”
Relationships: Poe Dameron/Rey
Series: Damerey Daily 2020 [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1599172
Comments: 8
Kudos: 29





	behind these eyes (a world is hiding)

**Author's Note:**

> I’m sad, so I wrote a thing. 
> 
> Title is from “Weak” by Daphne Khoo.

Rey doesn’t speak much more than she needs to. It would be hard to, really, when she’s spent so long believing not a soul in the galaxy would listen if she did. It’s a shield, her reticence. She cannot be rejected if she doesn’t give anyone a chance to reject her. 

(She knows - as she’s learned, so many times, so many ways, from so many people - that they would take it if they could.)

So she’s guarded, quiet. Everyone she’s come to know is aware of this, accepts it, but Rey doubts anyone sees the _pain_ behind those silences, the years of rejection and heartache, the sadness clawing at her heart whenever she sees someone tell a story to a rapt audience, when she overhears a heart-to-heart she wasn’t supposed to be privy to. She doesn’t expect anyone to notice the ache she feels when she sees that so many people are used to being _listened to,_ as if it’s the most natural thing in the world, when to Rey, even one moment of someone’s time, spared to speak to her, would be an indescribable treasure. 

(Rey wonders why she never had that - if she’s simply not good enough, if she never deserved to be heard in the first place.) 

So, though she knows at the back of her mind that she now has eager listeners all around her, she stays quiet. 

But in those rare moments when her guard slips and the ache in her heart subsides to make way for the enthusiasm bubbling up inside her for whatever she wants to say, when she slips up and launches into a story without thinking, she knows, in the back of her mind, that she’s got an audience of at least one. 

In those moments, she almost always notices Poe - Poe who talks and talks and _talks_ with all the ease of someone who’s used to an audience - looking at her like she hung every planet in the galaxy, awestruck, dumbstruck, maybe (definitely) lovestruck. Sometimes he’s not even in the room when she starts but she always sees him by the end of her story, lingering in the doorway, smiling at her as if to implore her - _pl_ _ease,_ _never stop.  
_

This time, Rey’s full-on yelling in the mess hall, most of the room staring at her in bewilderment as she gesticulates wildly, waxing as poetic as she knows how about (of all things) droid rights, and Poe’s just arrived for lunch when she goes off on a particularly impassioned tangent. Finn, sitting across the table from Rey on her soapbox, shrugs by way of explanation when he sees Poe. With a discreet smile, he takes a seat in front of her; she’s so involved now that she barely registers his presence. He hears her yell all the time - often at him - but this is different.   
  


This is Rey at her most passionate and her least guarded and it does things to his brain (already fried from a particularly mind-numbing debrief) that he cannot possibly hope to explain. 

“That was...really something back there,” he tells her later, reaching across her lap to grab her limp free hand. “Nice to see. I mean. Uh. How your eyes light up when you’re excited about what you’re saying. That...kind of thing. You should...”

She flushes. “Should what?” 

“I don’t know, just...say what you think a little more often.” He gives her hand a squeeze. “I’m all ears. Always.” 

She leans against his shoulder without even thinking about it, as if by instinct - as if it’s just the natural order of things, being as close as she can get to this strange, wonderful man, who _saw_ her, notices things about her that even she wouldn’t, who’s offered her a listening ear and maybe his heart over and over. 

“Maybe I will.”


End file.
